Somehow boring in spite of mind-blowing visuals

Rating: 6/10 (17 May 2015)

I know enough about filmmaking to where I can look at a movie and have some idea of how much work had to go into making it. And right from the start, Pacific Rim is STAGGERINGLY well-produced, so much so that it blew my mind. Giant monsters tear up the Golden Gate Bridge in slow motion. Giant robots wrestle with them underwater. Funky Chinese neighborhoods rebuild around the rib bones of vanquished monsters. We see the sumptuously detailed, futuristic airplane hangars where the giant robots are built.
And it starts off pretty good, too -- giant marauding monsters from a tear between dimensions at the bottom of the ocean? And the only way they can be fought is with giant robots? I actually bought that, the way they explained this at the beginning made it seem plausible -- sort of a surreal parable about man challenging the gods with his cunning. With the promise of there being even more dangerous monsters to come, I was excited about seeing the rest of it.
Unfortunately, it slowly got more boring after the exposition. It wasn't the lame acting, which was good enough for a movie about giant robots. This isn't Officer and a Gentleman.
No, the biggest problem was just that the monsters and the robots just looked BORING... And all VERY SIMILAR. I mean come on, you have all this money and all these top artists and animators at your disposal, yet the monsters are all these desperately middle-of-the-road "Godzilla 1998" knock-offs with absolutely no personality. The monsters from "Inhumanoids" were more creative and scary than these brain-dead lumps that just lumber through towns and throw slow-motion haymakers while roaring like walruses.